Speaker 1: This is he said, a ya Vho with Eric Winter
Speaker 1: and Rodalin Fantaz. All right, everybody, welcome to another episode.
Speaker 1: And he said, he said, ayad Ho will be here
Speaker 1: very soon, possibly even next week. She's coming home. Uh,
Speaker 1: finally after all this time. So I'm going to continue
Speaker 1: with my man Cave episodes here talking about things that
Speaker 1: interest me in Today, We're gonna talk a bit about
Speaker 1: rum Surprise Surprise, but not just my rum. Even though
Speaker 1: I'm representing with Palm Republic here, I'm talking about somebody
Speaker 1: else who is incredibly passionate about rum. I've learned so
Speaker 1: much from this guy, Brian Inman, aka the Rum Champion
Speaker 1: on Instagram and other platforms. Brian has become a friend
Speaker 1: because of so much I've you know, I've learned about
Speaker 1: his rum passions. But he works with tons of brands,
Speaker 1: he works with a lot of people, and his soul
Speaker 1: drive is to spread rum love to the world. So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and bring Brian in. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to chat with him more about what got him to
Speaker 1: this point. Brian, I already did an intro letting everybody
Speaker 1: know who you are, but I just got to say
Speaker 1: you know, to me, it comes a rum. You're the man,
Speaker 1: the myth, and the legend. I mean, you eat, sleep,
Speaker 1: breathe rum. I'm so thankful that we were able to meet,
Speaker 1: and you know, I consider you a friend now on
Speaker 1: this rum journey. But you have your own you know,
Speaker 1: this is a passion all on its own that you've
Speaker 1: built up and I can't wait to dive in more
Speaker 1: on what got you to this point. But everybody, I
Speaker 1: want to let you know. Like I said briefly, Brian
Speaker 1: is aka the Rum Champion. He has an incredible passion
Speaker 1: for rum. He even says, I drink rum and hang
Speaker 1: out for a living. I mean nothing sounds better than that.
Speaker 1: Look at that collection behind him, which is I know,
Speaker 1: I've been there, I've seen the collection. This is just
Speaker 1: a piece of what he has built out in his bar. Brian,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Eric, thanks so much for having me. I consider you
Speaker 2: a friend as well. We've done some cool things together
Speaker 2: and we have a few things in the hopper yet
Speaker 2: to go, so thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, and listen, I want people to know listen,
Speaker 1: my passion obviously is Palm Republic. Brian works with tons
Speaker 1: of brands. There's no he's not just sitting here going
Speaker 1: I got to promote Probably no, Brian has a full
Speaker 1: job working with RUMs. But you know, I think, I'm
Speaker 1: I don't want to speak for you, but I know
Speaker 1: you only you know you embrace RUMs that you're passionate about.
Speaker 1: You know, it's obviously you can't nurture every every product
Speaker 1: the same, but if you really believe in something, I've
Speaker 1: seen you get behind it with other brands and everything else.
Speaker 1: Am I am? I correct in saying that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent to Champion Rum. I picked the name.
Speaker 2: Anybody that's curious, it's not like the championship belt that's
Speaker 2: legitimately Game of Thrones, rip Prince Oberin. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's finding RUMs that I'm really passionate about that might
Speaker 2: not be represented in certain ways because rum eric, as
Speaker 2: you and I have talked about, is a very underrepresented
Speaker 2: and underappreciated spirit. So yeah, I get to pick the
Speaker 2: brands that I believe in and then I promote them,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, let me let me go back a little
Speaker 1: bit in your past. Were you always a rum drinker?
Speaker 1: Because I'm the first one to say to people I
Speaker 1: was not. I had to learn about this amazing spirit.
Speaker 1: But were you always a rum drinker?
Speaker 2: No, No, absolutely not. You know, growing up it was.
Speaker 2: You know, there's nothing more manly than drinking bourbon or
Speaker 2: single malt Scotch because James Bond drinks it, and I
Speaker 2: want to be a man, and you know, that's what
Speaker 2: we do, and that's what you know, societally we're supposed
Speaker 2: to do. Obviously, there's a big push now for sipping
Speaker 2: a gave spirits, et cetera. The reader's digest version of
Speaker 2: this is during COVID. You know, my joke is, people
Speaker 2: were making bread, some people were and I was deconstructing
Speaker 2: tiaki cocktails. Always really enjoyed going to tiki bars. The escapism,
Speaker 2: the cool mugs, the fanfare when you art, when you
Speaker 2: order certain drinks, the bar reacts, and so it's an
Speaker 2: ambience that kind of sucks you. So I always enjoyed that.
Speaker 2: And then during COVID, I started deconstructing these cocktails so
Speaker 2: for our lovely listeners that may not know, tiki is
Speaker 2: really Caribbean inspired cocktails. And then there was a gentleman
Speaker 2: who basically invented tiki here in Hollywood named Ernest Raymond.
Speaker 2: Beaumont Gant aka Don Beach. But he revolutionized mixology because
Speaker 2: he was split basing. So your base is your spirits.
Speaker 2: So rather than two ounces of whatever rum, he'd do
Speaker 2: an ounce of dark Jamaican rum and an ounce of
Speaker 2: gold Porto Rican rum. And so me reading these recipes
Speaker 2: and making them at home, I started asking myself, well,
Speaker 2: what's the difference for these Why are these two specific
Speaker 2: RUMs called for in this? And then that got me
Speaker 2: really interested in trying more RUMs by themselves, and quickly
Speaker 2: realizing that everything I knew about rum was wrong, you know,
Speaker 2: assuming that it was spice RUMs and you know, lime
Speaker 2: flavored RUMs, et cetera. But that wasn't the case. And
Speaker 2: so then I went way down the rabbit hole and
Speaker 2: the rest is kind of history from there.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you said a couple of things
Speaker 1: that just made me think about my journey with rum.
Speaker 1: And I know, for a lot of people, especially in
Speaker 1: the States, I should say I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean and Latin America, South America, you know,
Speaker 1: Central America, they have a handle on rum for sure.
Speaker 1: But in the States, you know, when I started drinking
Speaker 1: it was Captain Morgan. It was Malibu. It was, And
Speaker 1: there's nothing against any of these RUMs. These are all
Speaker 1: just different products with in a category. But people often
Speaker 1: equate rum as spiced, sweetened, flavored, you know, that whole thing.
Speaker 1: And when I was first exposed to it, it was
Speaker 1: a boocardios you know what I mean, in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: and it was with my you know now in laws
Speaker 1: for the first time and going, wow, I'm drinking I'm
Speaker 1: sipping this on the rocks. This is not how I've
Speaker 1: ever thought of this spirit. And I enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: really liked it. Really, this is a complex you know,
Speaker 1: it's a complex spirit like any of these other ones
Speaker 1: that are on the market. Now, what I also found
Speaker 1: fascinating and maybe even a little bit more unique, is
Speaker 1: there are many distilling methods with rum that can change
Speaker 1: the flavor and the notes and the profile of of
Speaker 1: the spirit. Whereas agave spirits, you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: locked into these same regions that do it, or the
Speaker 1: one region that does it, but the same distilleries that
Speaker 1: all make it, and they might have a little tweaks,
Speaker 1: so they might add little drops of X, Y and
Speaker 1: Z that they don't have to disclose to give it
Speaker 1: a little hint of flavor, but they're all made the
Speaker 1: same way, whereas with rum, you could be a pot still,
Speaker 1: a column still, and it really changes what you're sipping on.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people call it the funkiness of
Speaker 1: a Jamaican rum or something like that. You know, the
Speaker 1: way the pots still almost like a cognac, the way
Speaker 1: it will go off the pro you know, the profile.
Speaker 1: And I think it's something that people should learn to
Speaker 1: know that. It's a lot of fun exploring RUMs on
Speaker 1: the market. It's not just a linear.
Speaker 2: Spirit correct, Yeah, I mean it's it's there's infinite possibilities
Speaker 2: because there are no constraints. As you mentioned, rum is
Speaker 2: distilled in ninety plus countries, so RUMs from Vietnam are
Speaker 2: monumentally different from RUMs from Puerto Rico, and those are
Speaker 2: so different than Cane's uice rum that's coming out of Sicily,
Speaker 2: which that's now hitting the US market. And then that's
Speaker 2: even before you get into blending lovely RUMs together like
Speaker 2: what Palm Republic and all of its glory and amazingness
Speaker 2: is doing. So there's infinite there's infinite components, not even distillation.
Speaker 2: It's how long are you fermenting? Is it short, fermentation,
Speaker 2: is it long? Where are you distilling? Are you up
Speaker 2: in the mountains, are you at sea level? How are
Speaker 2: you aging? Where are you aging? There's some distilleries in
Speaker 2: the Caribbean that are actually aging their barrels underwater. I
Speaker 2: think it's one of maybe Grand King or something like that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's it's crazy. I've always kind of said
Speaker 2: if you're an adventurous spirits appreciator, and never have I said, oh,
Speaker 2: you need to stop drinking whiskey or agave or whatever.
Speaker 2: But if you're somebody that appreciates a good spirit and
Speaker 2: appreciates the true marriage of passion and science with distillation,
Speaker 2: then rum is absolutely something that you should stop sleeping
Speaker 2: on because it's the wild West and it's glory and
Speaker 2: it's amazing. And all I could say is be careful
Speaker 2: because you might end up like me with seven hundred
Speaker 2: ish bottles of rum in your house. I don't recommend
Speaker 2: it at all, but it's a rabbit hole for sure
Speaker 2: that can take you down.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to catch up to you. But what
Speaker 1: I you know, since I started getting, you know, into
Speaker 1: this space of rum, I really appreciated the varietals that
Speaker 1: are out there. There's so much to explore, like you said,
Speaker 1: from different places, different regions. That was one of the
Speaker 1: fun things about Palm Republic. And this is not an
Speaker 1: episode about Palm Republic, it's about Brian. But one of
Speaker 1: the things about us I just want to say is
Speaker 1: we really wanted to blend a premium rum to be sipped.
Speaker 1: We wanted to bring out many of the amazing characteristics
Speaker 1: of different RUMs from different regions and put them into
Speaker 1: a bottle. It wasn't to you know, blend to cover
Speaker 1: anything up. It was like, let's let people explore the
Speaker 1: differences of these different uh regions, Marcus distillation processes and
Speaker 1: put them in one bottle and have someone go, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's not what I expected. And I think, to your
Speaker 1: credit what you just said about all different RUMs, many
Speaker 1: bourbon and whiskey drinkers are shocked right now, at least
Speaker 1: in my experience, ones with Palm Republic, but even ones
Speaker 1: on other RUMs. It's like, whoa, this is actually a
Speaker 1: great alternative to branch out from my bourbon and my whiskey,
Speaker 1: and even our silver or other silvers are a great
Speaker 1: version of branch out from a tequila a block, you know,
Speaker 1: it's they or or a vodka for that matter. It's
Speaker 1: got a much better taste profile than a And I
Speaker 1: love vodka on the rocks of the Lime. That was
Speaker 1: my jam forever, Gray Goose Rocks Lion, that was all
Speaker 1: I did, and having there is you know, the truth is,
Speaker 1: vodka doesn't have a lot of flavor to it.
Speaker 2: It's just correct.
Speaker 1: Something you become accustomed to going. All right, I'll do
Speaker 1: a little less Cranberry, a little less Red Bull, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and I'll eventually get myself to just the drink,
Speaker 1: just the spirit. Whereas if you get into like these,
Speaker 1: agave isn't especially like even the silver RUMs that are good,
Speaker 1: there's a flavor profile that jumps out that's unique. Yep,
Speaker 1: And I think it's fun.
Speaker 2: It flips everything on its head. And so we'll stay
Speaker 2: with Palm Republic for a second because it's it's awesome.
Speaker 2: So I'm assuming many of your lovely listeners have tried it,
Speaker 2: so that the cool thing about Palm Republic is one
Speaker 2: the Jamaica component that you put into that really helps
Speaker 2: carry and round out a very delicious sipping experience. The
Speaker 2: other big piece that I have to commend you for
Speaker 2: is being very upfront and unapologetic about unadulteration. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a big debate going on in the rum world
Speaker 2: of oh, should rum be adulterated?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 2: Should it not be adulterated? If it has sugar, it's awful.
Speaker 2: There's a stylistic and cultural component to some of these
Speaker 2: things where I think myself and a lot of people
Speaker 2: end up is just be transparent. Are you putting things
Speaker 2: in there? The fact that we don't have nutritional labels
Speaker 2: on alcohol is crazy because you have not everything else.
Speaker 2: But with Palm Republic, it's just that's a big differentiator
Speaker 2: for you guys as leaning in and saying these RUMs
Speaker 2: are unadulterated, meant to be enjoyed. And the key thing
Speaker 2: that you said, Eric, that I really like, which endeared
Speaker 2: me to you very quickly, was just let's try it neat,
Speaker 2: because my mission is really just to get people to
Speaker 2: sip things neat. And I'm not saying don't trink a cocktail.
Speaker 2: Doesn't enjoy cocktails. I do all the time, But it's
Speaker 2: really breaking the mold and the cycle and these perceptions
Speaker 2: that people have with rum of there's either the when
Speaker 2: I say, oh, I'm a Rum guy, it's the really
Speaker 2: bad Jack Sparrow impersonation. Why is RUM gone? I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's gone, but I've earned that one.
Speaker 2: Or it's I don't like Rum. What have you had?
Speaker 2: Oh I had too much Captain in Cocain College, Or
Speaker 2: it's pina coladas. So Rum, as always, as you've said,
Speaker 2: too been associated with sweet and tiki drinks themselves, are
Speaker 2: very very sweet inherently so being able to bring to
Speaker 2: market a rum that flips fit on its head, and
Speaker 2: when you get people to try Palm Republic or other
Speaker 2: amazing RUMs, Chairman's Reserve, four Square, et cetera, you see
Speaker 2: kind of the lights of people's eyes kind of light
Speaker 2: up and go, wait a minute. Everything that I thought
Speaker 2: I knew about Rum is just I need to reassess
Speaker 2: everything now because it's just always been sweet and we're
Speaker 2: breaking them all together. So I love it.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that you know, even as
Speaker 1: I've gone with this brand and meeting different people, they're
Speaker 1: always the first assumption is, oh, I had a bad hangover,
Speaker 1: and I go, you know what, I had a bad
Speaker 1: hangover with tequila. Twenty five years ago, Tequila was garbage.
Speaker 1: You'd have a margarita or two or three and you're like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: I feel awful because it was blended, it was full,
Speaker 1: it was crushed eye, it was full of syrup and sugar.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the tequila. Well there to some extent, there
Speaker 1: wasn't as good a tequila back then. There's a lot
Speaker 1: better tequilas now, So to some extent it could have
Speaker 1: been you know, a little bit of percent of the
Speaker 1: tequila quality. But also it was the amount of sugar
Speaker 1: in the way it was being consumed. But there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as a skinny margarita back then. It was
Speaker 1: just a slushy. It's like putting a slurpee in with alcohol.
Speaker 1: You're gonna feel the effects and have a hangover because
Speaker 1: the sugar, the amount of sugar having in it. Any
Speaker 1: cocktail is going to affect you if it has too
Speaker 1: much sugar, the sugar is what's giving you the hangover,
Speaker 1: not the spirit necessarily. And I think with RUMs people
Speaker 1: often go, well, isn't that made from cane sugar? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's made from sugar, sugar cane, right, That's definitely a
Speaker 1: full sugar beverage. And you know, and correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, But agave is also a sweetener when you
Speaker 1: take it. You have to take the agave like the
Speaker 1: heart of the plant, and then they chop it up
Speaker 1: and they boil. They get it all boiled and cooked,
Speaker 1: and they turn it into a starch, which again is
Speaker 1: a sugar. But the difference is when you distill it
Speaker 1: and you bring the alcohol in and you take the
Speaker 1: sugars out in the distilling process. And it's the same
Speaker 1: with rum. Yes, it's coming from sugar cane, but when
Speaker 1: you're breaking it down, you're fermenting it and you're distilling it,
Speaker 1: a lot of that sugar is evaporating, going away and
Speaker 1: leaving you with this alcohol product. Yep. And when in
Speaker 1: the research I've done, funny enough, silver RUMs have about
Speaker 1: the same or less even chloric value than silver tequilas.
Speaker 1: It's about the same, it's not any greater. And when
Speaker 1: you get into the age spirits, an age tequila, an
Speaker 1: aged rum, or a bourbon, they're gonna have a little
Speaker 1: higher sugar profile because of the barrel and the aging
Speaker 1: and the sherry cask and all that. So you're bringing
Speaker 1: it in the process for all spirits. It's not just
Speaker 1: one made from caine. If you go to bourbons and whiskeys,
Speaker 1: it's what wheat, it's graines corn also corn. Also what's
Speaker 1: corn syrup an alternative to sugar exactly, So bourbon all
Speaker 1: that's coming from corn. So it still all bases itself
Speaker 1: out of like a sugary product, all of them. It's
Speaker 1: just when you go through the process, that goes away
Speaker 1: and you're left with an alcohol. So I want people
Speaker 1: to understand that because so many times people go rum sugar.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's not equal. It's not one to one. That's not
Speaker 1: how it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was doing an event at Kanya Rumbar,
Speaker 2: which for everybody listening, if you are around on the
Speaker 2: tenth of December, come hang out with Eric and I
Speaker 2: at Kanya Rumbar in downtown La did in a tasting
Speaker 2: event with Eldorado. I'm a part time brand ambassador for them.
Speaker 2: They're out of Guyana. We could talk all about their
Speaker 2: amazing wooden stills from the seventeen thirties in a different
Speaker 2: point in time, but Eldorado is a classic example of
Speaker 2: for the longest time they had and brought to market
Speaker 2: RUMs with very sweet syrupy profiles where you know carmel.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming there was some sort of sugar or something,
Speaker 2: but very surpy when you taste it. So we tried
Speaker 2: the first one from an old blend of bottle that
Speaker 2: I found collecting dust on a shelf. It's like ten
Speaker 2: years sitting there. Still good. Alcohol doesn't go bad. The
Speaker 2: first one everybody tasted, everyone was like, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: pretty surpy, this is pretty pretty smooth, pretty light. Then
Speaker 2: we went to a different year, an eight year aged
Speaker 2: expression of theirs with no sugar added, and then everybody
Speaker 2: could tell the night and day difference. Then we went
Speaker 2: to an older blend of a fifteen year that they
Speaker 2: did that was finished in dry madeira wine casks, madeira
Speaker 2: which is very sweet. Also with the old process of
Speaker 2: how Eldorado used to do things. So we went very sweet,
Speaker 2: very smooth, no alcoholic burn to the alcoholic burn because
Speaker 2: of the lack of sugar. And then we went back
Speaker 2: and then we finished at fifty eight percent and we
Speaker 2: basically yo yod. But the whole point is, I think
Speaker 2: as well for the market for the longest time, you know,
Speaker 2: Ronza kop Out of Guatemala really reintroduced this whole premiumization
Speaker 2: of rum. And I'm doing the air quots. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying it's a bad rum. I mean a lot of
Speaker 2: purists out there don't like it because of the sugar content,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But Zakappa was the.
Speaker 1: First add a little sweetened to that. Right, it's a
Speaker 1: little sweeter than most. Yeah. Yeah, they don't have to
Speaker 1: disclose though, correct me ever wrong, it's like two percent.
Speaker 1: Anything under two percent in any spirit. By the way,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of your favorite tequila's out there,
Speaker 1: I won't name names, but a lot of them that
Speaker 1: have hints of vanilla, hints of that. If you look
Speaker 1: at the back, it'll say this. No, they're adding that
Speaker 1: to the drink. They just don't have to disclose it
Speaker 1: after too less. It's under it's under two percent.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. And that really speaks to just not
Speaker 2: only just the rum category, but since we're talking rum,
Speaker 2: I don't know, ten, ten twenty years ago, Zakappa was
Speaker 2: seen as the bee's knees. Everybody was drinking sweeter RUMs.
Speaker 2: They were drinking lighter RUMs. And now for the people
Speaker 2: that are have gone down the rabbit hole, they typically
Speaker 2: like unadulterated. They like higher proof. Where I've ended up
Speaker 2: for myself is it's like burger king, have it your way, No,
Speaker 2: you want to basically just you want to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: And Richard Ceo from the four quart of Siler and
Speaker 2: Barbados has always said, and I really like this, Drink
Speaker 2: what you like, but know what you're drinking. And so
Speaker 2: for the undiscerning palettes, where I tell anybody to start
Speaker 2: with rum, because the whiskey comparison I'll make is when
Speaker 2: you're trying Scotch, you start with monkey shoulder. You don't
Speaker 2: start with lagavulin. And the same thing with rum. So
Speaker 2: if you've only ever had Captain Morgan and you're expecting
Speaker 2: something sweet, diplomatico is a great place to start because
Speaker 2: those were a little sweeter. And then you can jump
Speaker 2: over to something like if we're going to focus on
Speaker 2: the quote unquote Latin style aka column still lighter styles,
Speaker 2: dounku a Puerto Rico is amazing. I love them Florida
Speaker 2: Kanye as well, because Florida Kanye doun Q they're not
Speaker 2: adding any sugar or anything, so those are drier. So
Speaker 2: that's the entry point. Then you can go to Palm
Speaker 2: Republic Dark anybody, or the Palm Republic Silver and Barbados,
Speaker 2: Saint Lucia. There's a number of different places. So where
Speaker 2: I'm focused is really helping people on in their journey
Speaker 2: because you do need those stepping stones. You can't just
Speaker 2: say cool, yeah, you've only ever had Captain Morgan. Well,
Speaker 2: here's this sixty two percent rum from Barbados that you
Speaker 2: should drink. Because all the events I do and I
Speaker 2: try to have people drink cask strength rum or barrel
Speaker 2: proof rum. People always go they wins, and they go,
Speaker 2: oh god, am I supposed to like this? Well eventually,
Speaker 2: but if you never end up getting there, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Like rum is a journey, alcohol is a journey, but
Speaker 2: so the spirits. I guess in my adhd rant consumers
Speaker 2: and their profiles have certainly changed, and people are demanding
Speaker 2: at least transparency, and you have discerning consumers that I
Speaker 2: like to think, I know you and myself and so
Speaker 2: many others are really drinking to appreciate again, the passion
Speaker 2: and the science that are married together by the people
Speaker 2: who love what they do. It's not about taking shots.
Speaker 2: It's not about you know, going super hard every day.
Speaker 2: We couldn't you know in this alcohol business. And so
Speaker 2: I think that people becoming more aware of appreciating what
Speaker 2: they're tasting and demanding transparency in those discerning palettes is
Speaker 2: helping shift the market. Hasn't stopped a lot of brands
Speaker 2: from continuing to add, And I think that's because people
Speaker 2: still like sweet.
Speaker 1: Because it's more palatable to the average person, right, And
Speaker 1: I think that's what And even me to your point,
Speaker 1: like when I started just on any even on bourbons
Speaker 1: and whiskeys, I started, you know, a regular proof, right,
Speaker 1: it was made proof, that's all it was. And as
Speaker 1: you go down the journey, you start going you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like when I order a cocktail and I
Speaker 1: don't really actually taste the alcohol, like did they put
Speaker 1: anything in here? Or you know, I have an old
Speaker 1: fashion Wow, this is sweeter than it is, you know
Speaker 1: anything else. I don't. I don't feel like I'm getting
Speaker 1: the bang for the buck. When do you think this
Speaker 1: movement started? Because I know it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: movement in the bourbon and whiskey space. I think in
Speaker 1: tequila's well, and obviously in the rum space is overproofing, right,
Speaker 1: which something we did with our age as well. But
Speaker 1: when do you think that starter has that but just
Speaker 1: been going on for a long time that people are overproofing.
Speaker 1: It's just to the average consumer, it takes time to
Speaker 1: get to that spot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean on a global scale, I think that
Speaker 2: movement has been fairly recent within the last probably twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, somewhere in that window. And that's
Speaker 2: really kind of I know I've mentioned four Square a
Speaker 2: few times, but really at the forefront, they have these
Speaker 2: exceptional cask series line that they do, and the first
Speaker 2: that they released were eighty six proof, and then they
Speaker 2: quickly started going to one, twenty one, twenty two, one
Speaker 2: twenty six, and so that helped shift the market. Now,
Speaker 2: if we zoom in just on the island of Jamaica,
Speaker 2: Jamaicans drink white rum, and their white rum is sixty
Speaker 2: three percent. So it's stuff like Ray and Nephew rum,
Speaker 2: fire money, muscle, overproof, et cetera. So in certain pockets
Speaker 2: my Trinny friends down in Trinidad, they drink something called punchon,
Speaker 2: which no disrespect to punching, but it's an absolute abomination
Speaker 2: because it's it's as neutral of a white rum as
Speaker 2: you can get, so it's almost tastes like vodka, but
Speaker 2: imagine a one to fifty one vodka. Now they're not
Speaker 2: drinking that meat. I mean, some of them are, because
Speaker 2: there's they're a pretty big party culture in trinid they
Speaker 2: call them FETs and they have carnival and all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. But those are minor pockets, but the
Speaker 2: vast majority if you go down to Central South America,
Speaker 2: you know, in Nicaragua they drink it thirty five percent,
Speaker 2: in Mexico it's thirty five percent. So it really just
Speaker 2: depends on where people are in the world. But I
Speaker 2: would say that there's always been higher proof options, but
Speaker 2: they were always pretty minuscule. And then over the past
Speaker 2: handful of years, you've seen independent bottlers like Velluer or
Speaker 2: homes Key really take RUMs from around the world and say,
Speaker 2: this is a rum from Guyana bottle at fifty five
Speaker 2: percent or sixty something percent, and where of the nearly
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred that I've had, I can still appreciate things
Speaker 2: down at eighty. Sometimes they have a lot of flavor,
Speaker 2: like the Palm Republic silver, But where I typically like
Speaker 2: things is if it's forty three, forty five percent somewhere
Speaker 2: in that range. That's something I really enjoy sipping. I
Speaker 2: used to to be on the spectrum of the glasses
Speaker 2: down in the nose and the're going, well, you know,
Speaker 2: if it's not cask strength, I don't want it. It's
Speaker 2: not worth my time.
Speaker 1: Explain to our listeners the proof and the percent.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm not sure who created
Speaker 2: this whole system because weird.
Speaker 1: It's a weird troof percent.
Speaker 2: So, but the proof is when I say one hundred
Speaker 2: and you know, a hunter proof that means fifty percent alcohol.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure why we have both. I actually
Speaker 2: have to look up the history of that. I should
Speaker 2: have been more prepared.
Speaker 1: But it's a weird system. I had to learn it
Speaker 1: as I got into this space. I was like, wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: what eighty proof? What what does that mean? Percent wise?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's basically whatever the proof is, you just
Speaker 2: divide that by two and that's your ABV or your
Speaker 2: alcohol by volume. I really wish it would just be
Speaker 2: one standard way. So who knows, maybe maybe we can
Speaker 2: all get we can start a movement and just have
Speaker 2: it be one or the other.
Speaker 1: You know, what's the strongest proof you've ever had and
Speaker 1: did have you ever? Have you ever said, WHOA, that's
Speaker 1: too much?
Speaker 2: So I went to Uh, there's a really cool rum
Speaker 2: group in Singapore called the Rum Cartel, very intimate rum Club.
Speaker 2: They're all fortune five CEOs and it's Singapore, so you know.
Speaker 2: They pulled out a bottle from the from an independent
Speaker 2: bottle called Rum Deluxe. They are a Danish independent bottler
Speaker 2: for our listeners. Independent bottlers are third parties that are
Speaker 2: getting their hands on barrels from barrel brokers. That's how
Speaker 2: it's worked in the rum world for three hundred plus years,
Speaker 2: so think of them as a third party. The barrel
Speaker 2: brokers are in Amsterdam, they're in Liverpool, and so third
Speaker 2: part already. Independent bottlers go to these giant warehouses and
Speaker 2: say I want this barrel or I'm going to take this,
Speaker 2: and then they brand it and bottle it under their
Speaker 2: own label. Just like Palm Republic is a blender, they're
Speaker 2: not a distiller, so they're blending components from I'd imagine
Speaker 2: Eana Shear and others to be able to blend things
Speaker 2: together and then put their own label on it. So
Speaker 2: the rum world is a bit unique like that. I'm
Speaker 2: assuming in the whiskey world that there's independent bottlers as well,
Speaker 2: but Rum Deluxe it was. It was a eighty five
Speaker 2: point two percent basically still prove rum from the Hampton
Speaker 2: Estate for any of our listeners. Hampton Estate. If you've
Speaker 2: ever heard Jamaican funk, Hampton invented Jamaican funk. It's called
Speaker 2: high ester rum and the Hampton they have eight different
Speaker 2: marks that they can create. A mark is a recipe,
Speaker 2: and so I had their dok mark, which is the
Speaker 2: highest ester count or the most funk that you can
Speaker 2: pack into a rum legally before it turns into perfume.
Speaker 2: So it was called the White Tiger, and it was
Speaker 2: eighty five point two percent, and I was smelling colors
Speaker 2: a little bit. I had to take the tiniest little
Speaker 2: of SIPs. And with Jamaican funk, it is designed in
Speaker 2: a way and when you first hear about it, it
Speaker 2: sounds extremely disgusting and off putting. But there's things like
Speaker 2: there's gasoline in there. There is over ripe fruits that
Speaker 2: turn rotten in your mouth. So the best I can
Speaker 2: explain it is for our lovely Marvel fans out there
Speaker 2: with Doctor Strange watching him compose and then decompose the apple.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what was going on in my mouth.
Speaker 2: So that was the most intense one. And then that's
Speaker 2: a very specialty thing. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,
Speaker 2: they actually have something. The brand is called Sunset, and
Speaker 2: I love the name. It's very strong rum and it's
Speaker 2: still proof. So what I mean by stillproof is whatever
Speaker 2: it comes off the still at whatever proof, whatever percentage,
Speaker 2: that's what they bottle it at. So this was eighty
Speaker 2: four point five percent.
Speaker 1: So you're at like a one sixty something proof.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was I don't know why anybody drinks this,
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, take a shot.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, take a shot, burn your throat.
Speaker 2: I'm like, if I like long ago, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: as thirty six now, I don't have the idiocy of
Speaker 2: not the idiocy. I don't have the carelessness of youth
Speaker 2: to be like whatever I am. I'm going to do
Speaker 2: the much easmo thing. I'm going to prove myself I
Speaker 2: can drink whatever I want. I did that for a
Speaker 2: long time, as I'm sure many of us did. And
Speaker 2: that's why I'm very much I'm going to appreciate. I'm
Speaker 2: going to pace myself on drinking this because the next day,
Speaker 2: when you prove yourself, it's not as cool. And as
Speaker 2: the years go on, the luster of oh I said
Speaker 2: what yesterday? I did what? Oh man, I had how
Speaker 2: many shots? Oh? That's hilarious. As you get older, you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm good. I want to be able to do things
Speaker 2: the next day and enjoy being out with people and
Speaker 2: remembering what's going on. So I cannot stress enough where
Speaker 2: I'm hoping and hopeful to see a movement because a
Speaker 2: lot of people are moving towards NA components and I
Speaker 2: am all for non alcoholic cocktails. A number of bartender
Speaker 2: friends that have stopped drinking, I'm all for it. I
Speaker 2: think that there is a cultural thing in the US
Speaker 2: wherehere it's still let's drink to get drunk, and that
Speaker 2: this is your life. You do whatever you want. But
Speaker 2: I think that perspective has turned off a lot of
Speaker 2: people to drinking, whether you've done it yourself or you've
Speaker 2: seen people do all the different things that they do.
Speaker 2: And I hope I'm not getting preachy here, but I
Speaker 2: can't emphasize enough that drinking rum and hanging out for
Speaker 2: me is really appreciating everything so Eric, you've been over
Speaker 2: most of my bottles, there's maybe like less than ten
Speaker 2: percent empty because I want to taste and enjoy and
Speaker 2: so cannot stress enough to our listeners. If you are
Speaker 2: going down this rabbit hole, just takes some time to
Speaker 2: really appreciate, and then when you learn the stories of
Speaker 2: the people that are doing it, it just gets even better.
Speaker 1: It's similar to and I think people who are looking
Speaker 1: to appreciate spirits, it's not much different than sipping on
Speaker 1: a wine. Right when people want to sip on a wine,
Speaker 1: very few people. I'm gonna get hammered tonight on wine, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not the way you. Nobody approaches wine that way.
Speaker 1: Everybody says I'm gonna have a glass of wine. Everybody
Speaker 1: wants to be smelling, Oh, let me smell. There's this,
Speaker 1: there's apricout the bubble. You take a sipping wine tasting
Speaker 1: is fun. Even when you're at home. You might have
Speaker 1: a glass maybe two of wine, but you're it's a
Speaker 1: social experience. It's an appreciation of what you're sipping. People
Speaker 1: are very snobby about their wine. I think in that regard,
Speaker 1: you can be the same way about a spirit. Whatever
Speaker 1: you're drinking doesn't have to be wrong. But whatever you're drinking,
Speaker 1: you can enjoy the complexities of the spirit. If it's neat,
Speaker 1: if it's on the rocks, by the way, even if
Speaker 1: it's in a cocktail, like a lot of them we
Speaker 1: promote on our website, which is just like two ingredients,
Speaker 1: three ingredients. You can still appreciate a lot of the spirit.
Speaker 1: If you get into a very sweetened there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with it. If you want to go full tiki full
Speaker 1: whatever they can and a lot of different mixes, you
Speaker 1: can do that too and have a great time with
Speaker 1: is the cocktail. But it's about appreciating the drink and
Speaker 1: the spirit and not just getting hammered for the sake
Speaker 1: of drinking. And that's a big difference. I think that shift.
Speaker 1: You're right, there is a big movement for an an
Speaker 1: alcoholic beverages, mocktails, all that, and I'm all for it too,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a person that's ever drink. I mean,
Speaker 1: when I was younger, too much volume. Now I'm much
Speaker 1: more about let me have a drink. Maybe it's night,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a couple times a week, or with my friends,
Speaker 1: let me go out, let me have a cocktail, let's talk.
Speaker 1: I'll hang out and let me enjoy this spirit. That's
Speaker 1: a message I think that a lot of people should
Speaker 1: try to embrace, to really get to try different cocktails, drinks,
Speaker 1: whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you touched on something too, so for for
Speaker 2: a lovely listeners, questions that I get are what am
Speaker 2: I supposed to be smelling? What am I supposed to
Speaker 2: be tasting? So I'm going to do a shameless plug.
Speaker 2: I just dropped a video on YouTube today about how
Speaker 2: to experience your spirits from what kind of glass you
Speaker 2: could use, how you should knows or how what my
Speaker 2: process is because mine isn't the only way, and I've
Speaker 2: drawn an inspiration from multiple people. So there's that. So
Speaker 2: if you ever find yourself going, well, how am I
Speaker 2: supposed to smell? How am I supposed to taste?
Speaker 1: Quick?
Speaker 2: Quick spoiler alert, It's going to take a little while
Speaker 2: to develop your palette. So alcohol is always going to burn,
Speaker 2: whether it's at eighty, whether it's at one twenty four,
Speaker 2: it's it's always gonna have a little bit of a burn.
Speaker 2: And the other thing, Eric, that you said, I really
Speaker 2: like and cannot emphasize enough to our lovely, lovely listeners.
Speaker 2: Is that spirit forward cocktails?
Speaker 1: Eric?
Speaker 2: Who was what you were talking about? Where you want
Speaker 2: to taste the spirit are massively underrated. Again, I love
Speaker 2: a tiki drink, and Navy Grog is probably my favorite one.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you what your favorite TI is.
Speaker 1: That's I've never even had that one, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to try it.
Speaker 2: It's uh, there's three ounces of booze. There's honey mix,
Speaker 2: which is basically just diluted honey with water, and yeah,
Speaker 2: three different RUMs from three different places. White grapefruit juice.
Speaker 2: So if anybody's on medications, you're not supposed to have
Speaker 2: anything with grapefruit, so probably not for you. The other
Speaker 2: classic one is in my tie, So those have, you know,
Speaker 2: some sugary components and it's a lot of alcohol masked
Speaker 2: by the fruit juices and the syrup. So but for
Speaker 2: me now where I'm at, if I'm not just enjoying
Speaker 2: a nice little dram as they call it in the US,
Speaker 2: I like to call them sippy poos because I'm a
Speaker 2: child and I like fun things. So if I'm having
Speaker 2: a sippy poo with some friends or at home or whatever,
Speaker 2: I'm doing that. And if I'm not doing that. It's
Speaker 2: things like Negroni's or paper planes or excuse me, the
Speaker 2: puddle jumper with palm republic rum. Old fashions are always
Speaker 2: classic as well. So I actually just ordered a bar
Speaker 2: book from the eighteen sixties, not the original, obviously a replica,
Speaker 2: but I'm going back to see how they used to
Speaker 2: make cocktails back in the day, because it was very
Speaker 2: very simplistic, well as bitters. In some cases they were
Speaker 2: putting if it was a fancy drink, not the old
Speaker 2: fashioned way, which is a great story on its own.
Speaker 2: There was a little bit of cuistyle, which they spelled
Speaker 2: it differently back then bitters, and they used gum syrup,
Speaker 2: not actual simple syrup. So that's how it used to be.
Speaker 2: And then obviously with the progression of time and different
Speaker 2: the cures and flavorings and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: things have really come to it. But in order to
Speaker 2: really taste it, I always advise whatever spirit you drink
Speaker 2: it neat, you can swirl it around in your mouth
Speaker 2: so that mitigates the burn. It'll still burn in your mouth,
Speaker 2: but it won't kill you in your throat, your chest
Speaker 2: to your stomach, and then have it in a spirit
Speaker 2: forward cocktail to see how it plays with just regular
Speaker 2: simple syrup, or if you use a couple of different
Speaker 2: kinds of bitters, so you know, Angastora is always a classic.
Speaker 2: Fee Brothers for anybody that wants to make mocktails. Those
Speaker 2: are non alcoholic bitters. Their black walnut butters are fantastic,
Speaker 2: but you want to just see how those play together.
Speaker 2: And if there's any aspiring mixologists out there. The Flavor
Speaker 2: Bible is a phenomenal book. It's more so for cooking,
Speaker 2: but you can go to whatever ingredients cinnamon and it'll
Speaker 2: list out just in a list of what works with
Speaker 2: cinnamon and things that you may never expect or even
Speaker 2: like coffee. For example, lemon and lime juice actually work
Speaker 2: with coffee. It's something I never would have thought of
Speaker 2: without just going to this. But again, when you're making
Speaker 2: things at home too. When I started in this whole
Speaker 2: tiki thing, I was like, I'm going to make ten
Speaker 2: cocktail or ten ingredient cocktails, because that's what it is,
Speaker 2: and that's what's cool to be a bartender at home.
Speaker 2: And now that's all fine and dan, if you've done
Speaker 2: it for yourself. I invited a bunch of people over
Speaker 2: for the first ever official Rum party that I had.
Speaker 2: I had a nineteen thirty four zombie on the menu,
Speaker 2: which has fourteen ingredients thirteen fourteen ingredients, and I didn't
Speaker 2: batch any of the ingredients together. So when I had
Speaker 2: six people order at once, I was like, Okay, it
Speaker 2: took me like forty minutes to make all six of
Speaker 2: them because I didn't know what I was doing. So
Speaker 2: now you know, five ingredients are less, even four is better,
Speaker 2: and just the simpler is the better, right, And when
Speaker 2: you get the basics down, then you can start layering
Speaker 2: in acid adjusted pineapple juice and you know, homemade gum
Speaker 2: syrup and blah blah blah and all that.
Speaker 1: Brian, this has all been fascinating. We could probably go
Speaker 1: part two of this of this episode, but before and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for all of this knowledge. Before
Speaker 1: we I let you go, I wanted you to talk
Speaker 1: about your Rum Curious Club where people are find you,
Speaker 1: people that want to learn more about Rum. They want
Speaker 1: to be in, you know, inspired by your stories and
Speaker 1: just gain more knowledge. Share a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: God, I really hate talking about myself, Okay, So my
Speaker 2: main page where you can find me, my main channel,
Speaker 2: is on Instagram at the Rum Champion. I've got a
Speaker 2: YouTube page where I'm trying to grow the followership there.
Speaker 2: Just dropped a video about how to take spirits. I've
Speaker 2: got a treasure trove of information over there. I founded
Speaker 2: the Rum Curious Club, so that is the name of
Speaker 2: my rum club. I started it in January of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three with twelve people who came to my apartment,
Speaker 2: twelve strangers. It was really weird to try and get
Speaker 2: people to come to my house, but like, hey, do
Speaker 2: you guys want to drink rum? Like, here's weird. And
Speaker 2: so now we've actually expanded. We're hosted as Rum specific
Speaker 2: Curious Club events where we highlight one brand at six
Speaker 2: bars throughout California. I host as the Rum Champion a
Speaker 2: number of in person events. You can find all of
Speaker 2: those events on the rumcuriousclub dot com. And now also
Speaker 2: over the second largest rum club relative to Facebook groups.
Speaker 2: We have nineteen hundred members and we're only behind the
Speaker 2: Florida Rum Society, who Eric knows very well as well.
Speaker 2: So the last piece actually is Eric is going to
Speaker 2: be on my podcast to the Rum this coming Monday.
Speaker 2: So you got Instagram, you got YouTube, I do some
Speaker 2: things on TikTok. I still don't understand that platform at
Speaker 2: all because I'm too old, I think you know, and
Speaker 2: at thirty six, I'm like, god, well, this is payback
Speaker 2: for me giving my parents. What do you mean you
Speaker 2: don't know how to use aim? What do you mean
Speaker 2: you how text messages work? Give me that? Let me
Speaker 2: show you. So, Yeah to the Rum. You can find
Speaker 2: all these links on my Instagram page to all the
Speaker 2: places the website for the events. You can join the
Speaker 2: Facebook group there. You can listen to any and all
Speaker 2: podcast episodes that I've done, and it'll take you right
Speaker 2: to YouTube as well if you want to see so
Speaker 2: my link tree is in my bio on Instagram at
Speaker 2: the Rum Champion, and I.
Speaker 1: Encourage you all to do it, especially if you are
Speaker 1: curious about Rum as I once was. Please dive in,
Speaker 1: get your knowledge, explore, learn, It's a lot of fun. Brian,
Speaker 1: thank you for being on the podcast. Can't wait to
Speaker 1: be on yours next week. Appreciate your time and uh
Speaker 1: I'll see you soon.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thanks for having me, and I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: the tenth as well. So anybody in La come see
Speaker 2: us on the tenth in downtown on your rum bar.
Speaker 1: Appreciate rum bar la all right, man, take care. Thanks bye,
Speaker 1: that was a lot of fun. I hope you all
Speaker 1: enjoyed having Brian on. You know, like I said, this
Speaker 1: guy is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to rum.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited that he has embraced palm and as
Speaker 1: one of his many you know, other RUMs that he supports.
Speaker 1: But he is truly a believer, like I said, made
Speaker 1: us a special drink, The puddle Jumper. Just somebody that
Speaker 1: I think anybody interested in rum should check out. So
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. If you have something you want
Speaker 1: to talk about when Rosland's back as well, send it
Speaker 1: to our dms that he said aado or email us
Speaker 1: at Ericinross at aheartradio dot com. And until next time, bye,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Don't forget to write us a review
Speaker 1: and tell us what you think.
Speaker 2: If you want to follow us on Instagram, check us
Speaker 2: out at he said Ajavi or senos An email.
Speaker 1: Eric and Ross at iHeartRadio dot com. He said. Ajaviho
Speaker 1: is part of iHeartRadio's my Puntuda podcast network. See you
Speaker 1: next time. Bye,